# Certbot has problem setting up the virtual environment

**URL:** <https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-has-problem-setting-up-the-virtual-environment/83678>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [January 23, 2019, 12:08am UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-has-problem-setting-up-the-virtual-environment/83678 "2019-01-23T00:08:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 8

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![erica](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/letsencrypt/user_avatar/community.letsencrypt.org/erica/32/8648_2.png) [@erica](https://community.letsencrypt.org/u/erica)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2019, 3:20am UTC](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-has-problem-setting-up-the-virtual-environment/83678/8 "2019-01-23T03:20:28Z")

</div>

This is a problem in pip. You can fix this for now by adding the `--no-download` flag to the calls to `virtualenv` on lines 1001 and 1003:

```auto
diff --git a/certbot-auto b/certbot-auto
index be2c367..2c0f64a 100755
--- a/certbot-auto
+++ b/certbot-auto
@@ -998,9 +998,9 @@ if ["$1" = "--le-auto-phase2"]; then
     rm -rf "$VENV_PATH"
     if ["$PYVER" -le 27]; then
       if ["$VERBOSE" = 1]; then
- virtualenv --no-site-packages --python "$LE_PYTHON" "$VENV_PATH"
+ virtualenv --no-site-packages --no-download --python "$LE_PYTHON" "$VENV_PATH"
       else
- virtualenv --no-site-packages --python "$LE_PYTHON" "$VENV_PATH" > /dev/null
+ virtualenv --no-site-packages --no-download --python "$LE_PYTHON" "$VENV_PATH" > /dev/null
       fi
     else
       if ["$VERBOSE" = 1]; then

```

> <https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/6682#issuecomment-456654339>

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